Bridging the Gap to Information

Saturday, December 14, 2013

As a medium of marketing and communication, video is a very effective and powerful tool. Having a short video on your home page can increase viewer engagement greatly. The video can be a behind the scenes clip of how your company works or it can be a short tutorial on using the company's products or services.

One of the world’s leading video platforms is YouTube. This site commands a great deal of traffic with millions and millions of views every day. The fact that YouTube is free to use means that businesses can use it as an avenue to carry out some video marketing for their brand. Not only is it rather easy to use, it also accords you a mass market that can be far reaching if tapped into in the right way.

Of course, therein lies the problem. Most companies do not realize nor do they experience the full extent of what YouTube can do to their marketing efforts. This is mainly because they go about it in the wrong way.

Here are Useful Tips On How Small Businesses Need To Use YouTube.

1. Have a customized channel:

Most companies go straight into uploading videos without setting up the proper launch pads or avenues. Setting up a customized channel that bares your company logo, your URL and basically screams your brand is one of the most effective ways to stand out on YouTube. This means that viewers can subscribe to your channel and thus get notifications on every single upload and update you make. This ties them down as avid followers and helps increase their engagement level with your brand.

2. Have organized content:

Rather than haphazardly uploading tons of video, you should take the time to organize them in some particular manner. If your company deals in product development, you could have videos that follow through the entire process for those subscribers who might be interested in finding out how what they are using is made. Organize your videos chronologically or even lump certain materials together. Just make sure everything you upload is a part of a bigger picture or message and not just random videos to flood the platform and your viewers.

The era of 'if you build it, they'll come' is unfortunately coming to an end. Nowadays you need to promote, promote and promote some more. Once you have uploaded a video on YouTube, provided it is relevant to the subject, you need to promote it in other avenues. YouTube has many options that can help you when it comes to this. Linking your videos to Facebook and Twitter is fairly easy through the initial YouTube settings. Additionally, YouTube videos are fairly easy to embed in other media using HTML. This is the best way to get viewers to view your content and subscribe to your channel.

4. Make use of analytic tool:

The only way to know what is working and what isn't so you can tweak your approach accordingly is by paying attention to the free analytics offered by YouTube to its users. This data shows you views, community, demographics and discovery. The last part lets you know how the viewer came to know about your video. With this information, you can tell what you need to do to increase viewer engagement with your content.

5. Make use of the YouTube community as well as tags:

Being a social media platform, you need to connect with other users to increase your reach within the various communities. By connecting with other users, you can cross-promote your material. This can also be done by making use of tags. By having a wide range when tagging your videos, you can fall under several categories when a viewer searches for your niche specific keywords. For example if you offer flower services, you can tag as many species as you can. From roses to lilies, make sure that whenever anyone searches for any flower, your video will be among the results shown.

Many companies set up a YouTube channel and then neglect it after a little while. Try to avoid falling into this trap. Once you have set up a YouTube channel, make sure that you work on it regularly. This includes making sure that spammy and inappropriate comments are deleted, responding to viewer comments, respond to friend requests, add a few favorites every now and then and so much more. Neglecting your channel will render the whole process null and void in the long run.

There you have it, a few Useful Tips on How Small Businesses Need to Use YouTube.

Chinaza Tochukwu is a Passionate Blogger, entrepreneur, social media marketer and a music lover. You can connect with him on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest. You can as well grab his Feed and get updates through email.